


To Have, To Hold

by AuditoryCheesecake



Series: A Cheesecake's Tumblr Shorts [35]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, But also, Family, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Healing, Love, Neglect, touch starvation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2019-08-20
Packaged: 2019-09-20 05:53:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17016972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AuditoryCheesecake/pseuds/AuditoryCheesecake
Summary: Veth grows a little more accustomed to touch.A series of unconnected one-shots focusing on Nott the Brave and her relationships to others, past, present, and future.





	1. Chapter 1

The first time Caleb touched her it wasn’t even him. It was a bad night, a cold one, and she lay next to their smoky little fire, shivering from more than just the frost on the ground. Caleb was sitting watch, nervous even with his brilliant little silver thread around them, and she’d made him put the one ragged blanket they’d stolen over his bony knees.

She could feel her teeth chattering, and tried to keep it quiet.

“Are you all right, Nott?” he asked.

“Of course I am,” she told him. Her voice scratched on the way out, even more than usual. Her hands were tucked up under her arms, but she could feel the claws scratching her skin as she shook again. “Don’t worry about me, Caleb.”

The warm weight over her midsection was a shock. Frumpkin was a big cat, compared to her, and when he materialized an inch above her to land with all four paws in her gut, it hurt a little. She curled onto her side, but Frumpkin just rolled with her. Nott stayed as still as she could as he walked across her three times, finally settling with his nose tucked under her chin and his long orange body draped across her.

“You should not-- ah, please do not eat him,” Caleb said.

Frumpkin started purring.

She stroked gently between his eyes. “I won’t.”

The first time he touched her skin, she almost didn’t notice, because they were running for their life again. She noticed later, the second time, when he quietly unwound her bandages and cleaned the dirt out of the hole the guard's arrow had left in her arm.

It became commonplace-- playing Mother’s Love, climbing in and out of windows, the time he carried her over the stream in the woods.

It became casual-- sharing drinks and food at the fireside, moving quickly, guiding Caleb when he looked through Frumpkin’s eyes.

It became comforting-- pressing close beside him when they had to go into towns, taking his hand when he stared into the fire for too long, curling up at the foot of the bed to be near the window but still on his feet in case he moved in his sleep.

Touches become frequent, in their merry band of assholes. Jester is the easiest, because she wants to love and be loved. She misses her mother, she can tell before Jester even tells them her whole story. She carries that feeling around her: hold me close and tell me your secrets and run into the moonlight with me and let’s be happy. Nott has never met anyone who loves in the way that Jester does, not even Yeza.

They lose Jester, and Fjord and Yasha and Molly. They get three of them back. Caleb can’t say the words and she wants to pull them out of him. She wants to shake him by the shoulders until the truth rattles out of him. Now she knows what he won’t say and now she wants two things.


	2. Chapter 2

Veth thinks, when she was a baby, people were gentle with her. If only because-- well, that’s just what you _do_ with babies. Hug them, love them, kiss their perfect little noses even if they’re crooked, reach out your hands so they know that hands are for holding and they reach back. So, when she was a baby, she must have been touched with kindness.

But it’s been some years. Children are not treated the same as babies. The lonely children, the ugly ones on street corners, don’t get cooed over by strangers. If they’re lucky, they get ignored. If they’re really lucky, a rich lady from a big city thinks they’re so shabby and vile they must be an orphan, or diseased, and carefully drops a coin in their hands without touching them. If they’re so lucky it bends believing, they don’t notice the other kids across the street, staring in the silent shock that follows the perfect punchline, before the laughter starts.

But if she’d been born that lucky, she wouldn’t be like this. If she’d ever been that lucky, someone would have wanted to hold her hand.

So even though she knows it’s a dare, even though it’s so clearly just a joke-- they’re not even bothering to try to hide their laughter, shoving each other with their elbows and snickering loudly behind their hands-- she lets Yeza kiss her. He’s not handsome but he doesn’t need to be. He’s smart but quiet, and his eyes are kind.

Not now. Now, they slide off to somewhere over her shoulder, and don’t meet her own. His brown face, with just a hint of hair coming in over his lip, is flushed, and his normal half-grin is twisted down. He doesn’t think this is funny.

That actually makes her feel better.

She hopes it’s because he feels bad for being part of the joke. Maybe it’s a sign that he’s growing up and the rest of them will too-- not that adults have treated her much better, but she can hope. A angry little knot in her heart is glad that she’s not alone in the punchline, this time. Someone else is uncomfortable, someone else is taking just a piece of it. She’s sorry it’s him, and that she’s an instrument of his humiliation, but she feels, for a moment, like she’s in on the joke too. She hates that.

Yeza takes a deep breath and looks at her. Someone says something she can’t hear, but she knows the tone. She closes her eyes.

She feels his hand on her cheek, surprisingly soft, and then his lips against hers. It’s quick, but her skin tingles where he touched her, even after he’s gone. He doesn’t look at her for the rest of the day, but she sees him touch a finger to his lip, and smile.


	3. Chapter 3

The fire gutters, casting weird shadows on the trees around them. Caleb’s brilliant thread lies quiet around them, but if she squints, she can almost see a silver glitter in the leaves on the forest floor.

Beside her, Nila opens her smell bag and holds it up to her broad nose. When she puts it down, she looks only a little bit comforted.

“We’ll find them.”

Nila startles a little and looks at her. “I know we will.” Maybe it’s the darkness, but she doesn’t seem as sure as she did earlier. Maybe they haven’t inspired a whole lot of confidence yet.

Veth bites her lip and glances around at the camp. They’re all asleep. Caleb is curled around Frumpkin, muttering in quiet Zemnian every so often. Beauregard is snoring, just a little. The other firbolg, Clay, is flat on his back in the dirt, a strange half-smile on his face. “Can you keep a secret?”

“I don’t, usually.” Now Nila looks suspicious.

“It’s nothing bad, I just– I haven’t told everyone. But I want to tell you, because you need to understand.”

After a long moment, Nila nods.

Veth rubs her hands over her arms, almost goes for her flask, then settles for picking at the edge of a bandage. She can feel it starting to fray. “I have a son,” she starts.

She watches the smile break over Nila’s wide, kind face like the sun rising, and it hurts. It fills her lungs and grabs her throat and she takes a deep gulp of air so she doesn’t cry.

“You love him,” Nila says.

Veth nods. “So much.” She breathes. “More than anything. I have a son, and a husband, and I’m so, so sorry that yours are taken.”

Nila takes her hands, and Veth realizes she’s shaking. Nila has less fur on the palms of her hands, but they’re soft as velvet, and they cradle her twisted green talons like… like it’s fine. Like they’re just hands.

“I worry for them,” Nila murmurs. “I’m scared. But I believe that I will get them back. I believe you and your friends will help me.”

“We’ll do everything in our power,” Veth says. “Everything.”

She holds Nila’s huge, soft hands and looks up into her eyes. She doesn’t know how old firbolgs get. Older than goblins, definitely, but Nila still seems young to her.

What would she do if Luc and Yeza were in danger? If they were stolen and imprisoned and hurt? She knows that, in Nila’s place, she would hunt them to the ends of the earth. The thought of her Yeza, brilliant and kind, in the hands of someone like Lorenzo– or Luc, good, smart, sweet little Luc, being hurt– it’s more than terrifying.

Even Caleb had been surprised by Nila’s fury, they all thought she was too gentle and sweet to hold that rage inside her. But Veth understood. If her boys were injured, she would bite and scream and cut. She would throw acid and shoot arrows and call lightning. She would do anything in her power to save them. She had. And as scared as she’d been, as much as it had hurt, as lonely and excruciating and fucking terrible as this second life has been, they are alive and safe.

They are going to school and brewing potions and playing in the yard. They are reading together by candlelight after sundown, and buying sweetrolls from the bakery around the corner. They are alive, and that is worth a thousand deaths.

Veth understands.

“I swear to you,” she says. She hates how her voice scratches, hates how her eyes blink, hates how her ears twitch. “I swear, we will bring them home.”


	4. Chapter 4

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t know how the clasp works.”

She held her hair patiently out of the way, enjoying the warmth of his fingers on the back of her neck, even if they were shaking and a little sweaty. “I don’t mind. It’s a beautiful necklace.”

He chuckled. “I guess I should have practiced.” He tried again, and the chain slipped down the back of her dress as he dropped it again.

Veth smiled at the ground. She didn’t want Yeza to think she was laughing at him, but it was a little funny. “Can I try?”

“Not yet.” He fiddled with it longer, and Veth waited until he sighed, a little puff of air against her skin that made her shiver. “All right. I give up.”

She took the chain from him. There was nothing special about the clasp, and in her hands it was closed in half a breath. She turned around to face him, nervous. But he didn’t change his mind and take it back. The metal slowly warmed to match her skin, and Yeza kissed her softly.

“What a fool I am.” He said things like that sometimes, and it made her want to shake him and tell him he was a genius and wrap him up in a blanket at the same time. But this time his tone was light and he didn’t have that furrow between his eyes. “I can’t even work the clasp on a necklace.”

“That’s fine,” Veth told him. “I’d still love you if you couldn’t tie a shoelace.”

He stared at her for so long, brown eyes huge and startled, and she’d wanted to swallow the words back down how she’d swallowed the wine they’d shared the first night he’d kissed her-- _really_ kissed her-- but they were out, dangling in the air between them. She squared her shoulders and stared back.

And then he smiled, _really_ smiled, one of the smiles that made her heart race, and maybe it wasn’t so frightening to have that out in the open after all.

\--

They were outside the gate she’d run through a thousand times, but as soon as Yeza had lifted the latch, Veth’s feet had turned to lead. The sweet, spicy smell of the Brenotto family’s famous-- and secret-- stewed hare hung on the frosty air.

“Come on,” Yeza rubbed his hands together. “It’s cold out here.”

She shook her head and pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders. It was old and washed so many times it was more gray than green. The frayed edges were hidden by the darkness of the evening, but as soon as the light inside fell on them, it would be so obvious. “This was a bad idea.”

“My family loves you,” Yeza told her, gentle but firm. “My ma is always telling me to bring you for dinner more. She likes how much you love her stews.”

Veth’s shoulders shook, but not from the cold. “This is different and you know it.” They loved her the way she loved the ragged street cat that lived under her shed, with pity and indulgence, and the firm understanding it would need a solid bath if it were ever to actually come inside.

Yeza closed the gate again and wrapped his arms around her. She felt his breath move her hair and tried to match the rapid rise and fall of her own chest to his. A crownsguard passed by them with a chuckle, but Veth didn’t move.

When the light from his torch faded away, and they were almost alone in the almost-dark once more, Yeza touched her chin and she looked up at him. His eyes, always crinkled at the edges from so many smiles, were serious. “I do know that. And I promise, that if things go wrong tonight, or next week-- if they don’t approve or don’t understand-- I’ll still love you even if they don’t want me too.”

She felt her face scrunching with the effort of not crying. “I want _them_ to want me,” she whispered.

“I know, love.” Yeza’s hands shook a little. “And as much as it’s possible to know what my Ma’s thinking, I believe they do. Really. But they don’t matter.”

Her breath sucked in through her teeth. “Of course they do, Yeza. They’re your family.”

“You matter more.” He sounded so absolutely certain. “Veth, I want to marry you. I’m going to. You come first now, no matter what.”

The Brenatto’s front door opened, spilling light across Yeza’s face. There was no trace of a joke in his eyes. Veth bit her lip and nodded.

Yeza’s younger sister whistled at them-- Veth deeply regretted teaching her how to do that. “If you two stay out there any longer, Ma’s going to have a conniption.”

Yeza laughed then, and Veth found herself smiling along. She let Yeza lead her through the gate, her hand still clasped in his.

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as just a little ficlet, and now I've written more ficlets..... and this will be Nott's collection so I don't have to think of any more titles. Come say hi on tumblr @goblin-gardens or twitter @teddyzinga!
> 
> Ironically, I came up with the title before the Husband Reveal.


End file.
